The Cloak of Anonymity Stifles Respectful Debate

The Miami Herald announced today that it is outsourcing its comment function to Facebook. Concluding that ‘the cloak of anonymity stifles respectful debate,’ we must assume that they’ve had enough of those who can’t stand behind their own words. Perhaps they should have referenced the ‘cloak of pseudonymity’ since online anonymity is increasingly impossible to achieve.

Once the bastion for mudslingers, trolls and angry, self-righteous cyberlibertarians, Brian Stetler of the New York Times suggested that the internet is now where anonymity goes to die. Maybe that’s a good thing.

The freedom to publish in the absence of accountability may be the type of ugly hybrid responsible for all this as described by Jaron Lanier in Culture:

“Individuals best achieve optimal stupidity on those rare occasions when they are both given substantial powers and insulated from the results of their actions.”

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Bryan Vartabedian, MD

Bryan Vartabedian is a pediatrician at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children's Hospital and one of health care’s influential voices on technology and medicine. 33 charts is a sandbox for his evolving ideas.